NBC is under assault from all sides

Commentary: Plus, why the Beatles are soaring again

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- These days, NBC is under attack from all sides.

Viewers for Jay Leno's new ballyhooed program have tumbled from a peak of about 18 million to roughly a third of that total as the novelty of a primetime comedy-variety-talk show has worn off.

Further, NBC News is looking over its shoulder nowadays. It has traditionally trumped the competition at the breakfast and dinner hours as well as on Sunday mornings. But that could change, what with the prospect of ABC's
DIS, +0.61%
Diane Sawyer soon succeeding Charlie Gibson on the evening news.

ABC also put out a press release Thursday afternoon, noting that a mere 210,000 viewers now separate NBC's first-place Sunday talk show "Meet the Press" from "This Week with George Stephanopoulos."

Even NBC Sports is taking a hit. Its giddy coverage of the new $1.2 billion Cowboys Stadium was blasted by disgusted critics. "You knew trouble was coming when the broadcast started with images of the Taj Mahal and Egyptian Pyramids, leading to a loving shot of the gleaming new Cowboys Stadium," wrote Eric Deggans, the St. Petersburg Times television critic.

With parent General Electric
GE, +0.43%
having problems impressing Wall Street, you can be sure that talk will surface, once again, about GE unloading its vanity play and leaving behind the volatile broadcasting industry.

Even in good times, NBC can seem to resemble a loose shirttail in GE's body of assets. If you could figure out why GE has dubbed NBC a "core asset," then feel free to call GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt. He's likely wondering at times, too.

NBC's image was shaken in July when Ben Silverman, co-head of NBC's entertainment operation, exited the network. The Wall Street Journal observed that the executive's departure was "ending one of broadcast TV's high-profile experiments in re-inventing itself as its dominance continues to wane."

Continues to wane? Ouch.

Except for "The Office" and "30 Rock," NBC has come up with precious few hits lately and has sparked talk that the network is a poster child for the shortcomings of network television across the board.

TV critic Josef Adalian of The Wrap.com pointed out on Thursday: "The good news for NBC is that Leno is anything but a disaster, at least so far. He's in the game, and that's better than being dead on arrival.

Leno is... anything but a disaster? Ouch again.

The key question is when -- not if anymore -- Immelt will sell NBC, whose portfolio includes NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, Bravo and other assets.

Michael Holland, who heads his own money management firm in New York, has appeared frequently over the years on CNBC and understands Immelt's thinking well.

"Immelt has shown that he is capable of disposing things that don't fit the mainstream at GE," Holland pointed out. Holland said Immelt would take seriously the prospect of selling NBC "if he were offered a bid for it today. But now is not the best time. They're not doing that well and valuations are down. This is not time to get a great price.

"It has got to be a premium bid. Then Immelt could take those dollars and turn them around to help GE shareholders," Holland said.

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

Four decades after they recorded their last album together, the Beatles are again topping the charts and teaching the entertainment industry a valuable lesson.

Since the release on 09/09/09, the Beatles' digitally remastered collection of CDs has been a sensation.

Consider what happened during the first five days of the release. In the primary markets of North America, Japan and the U.K., Beatles fans have snapped up more than 2.25 million copies of the discs both individually and in two multiple-CD boxed sets, in stereo and mono formats. In the United States alone, customers bought more than 1 million copies of remastered works.

You can be sure that the managers of the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, the Who and other pop-music stars with great pedigrees have noticed the Beatles' phenomenon and are now considering offering "new" products of recycled works to eager consumers.

What the Beatles are teaching the entertainment world is a crash course in supply and demand. The demand is definitely there. All a company has to do is understand that baby-boomers are hungry for reminders of their carefree youth -- and they will gladly pay big bucks to get a nostalgia fix that will remind them of the good old days.

This isn't the first time that the Beatles hammered this sermon home. Several years ago, the group's "1," a CD consisting of the Beatles' No. 1 hits, was a blockbuster as well. It sold millions of copies and and reached the No. 1 position in the charts worldwide.

Does nostalgia sell? Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

MEDIA WEB QUESTION OF THE DAY: What do you like or dislike about Jay Leno's new show?

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